It’s a good step forward in addressing health, environment and quality of life issues.

The state’s congressional delegation had urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to approve the state plan to significantly reduce the emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants. The move is intended to clear up skies in natural areas such as Rocky Mountain National Park, Mesa Verde, Maroon Bells and the Great Sand Dunes.

We love our wild lands in Colorado, and taking steps to ensure they are enveloped in clean, crisp air is a positive move indeed.

Memorial services were held across the country yesterday to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, in which 3,497 people died. Many of the nation’s political cartoonists also commemorated the anniversary.
[media-credit name=”Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant ” align=”aligncenter” width=”495″][/media-credit] Read more…

In reading through the Colorado Supreme Court’s 50-page ruling Monday in which it refused to give Ward Churchill back his job, it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. The opinion is so full of esoteric discussion of legal concepts such as “quasi-judicial absolute immunity,” “state sovereign immunity” and “Section 1983” actions that non-specialists are likely to end up shaking their heads in frustration and bewilderment.

So here’s a condensed primer on what happened to Ward Churchill and why it’s a good thing.

In 2001, Churchill wrote a vicious essay about the 9/11 attacks in which he blamed the victims. When the essay came to light in 2005, a number of public officials called for his termination as a University of Colorado professor. CU naturally launched an investigation, which concluded that what he had written was protected free speech.

In the course of the probe, however, the school learned of allegations that Churchill had indulged in plagiarism and other over-the-top academic misconduct, and decided to investigate those, too. It did, found them to be true and, after an almost comically protracted and redundant disciplinary process, finally fired the professor in 2007.

Churchill sued and a gullible jury, swayed by the grotesquely misleading testimony, found in Churchill’s favor but also found no economic or noneconomic damages – as incoherent a verdict as you will ever see. The judge vacated the verdict and refused to reinstate Churchill in his job. Basically, what the Supreme Court’s ruling means is that original decision that CU needn’t reinstate him stands.

As for why it is a good thing, that should be self-evident. Universities need to be able to fire academic frauds and cheaters such as Ward Churchill. Had he survived in his position, he’d stand as a humiliating rebuke to the vast majority of professors who do research the old-fashioned way, through the honest and painstaking citation of sources.

This morning I ran across a piece in The Washington Post that makes the case that most girls “throw like girls,” which, as someone who has played a fair amount of sports in my life, immediately caught my eye.

We’re talking the overhand winging of a baseball in an awkward, uncoordinated way.

The piece, which had 483 comments at the time I started writing this blog posting, goes into long digressions about studies showing boys throw balls farther than girls and the mechanics of the overhand throw.

Let me tell you folks, this is no great mystery. You get good at throwing a ball overhand if you practice a lot when you’re a young kid — girl or boy. If girls have access to and interest in playing softball or baseball (or brothers to play with) when they’re young, they’ll throw just fine.

Maybe they won’t throw as hard as boys do, but they will not “throw like a girl,” with a dropped elbow and lack of proper body rotation. Trust me, I’ve seen it. You don’t have to have big shoulders, or technique coaching. You can do it with pink fingernails and a pony tail and you certainly don’t have to be a guy.

But I do think this skill — just like learning to ski or swim properly — is more easily absorbed by kids. If you haven’t learned to throw before you’re out of high school, it’s going to be harder to get it. I’ve seen a fair share of guys who can’t throw a ball properly and it’s because for whatever reason they didn’t play when they were young. It’s more embarrassing for them because they’re expected to know how to throw like a Major League outfielder.

The Washington Post piece is a provocative one, and I presume it was meant to be so. But it also, I think, fails to adequately pull apart the difference between stereotypes and circumstances, and how easily the two are conflated.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

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